The last blog post is on a topic that is fascinating me at the moment. I have brought my children to France for three months, to experience school in the second of their native languages - French.
At home in Australia they are in grade 3 (reading fairly fluently) and Grade 1 (getting the hang of it). In Australia, I feel they are managing fairly well with the acquisition of literacy, but their writing is all over the place, their spelling still quite phonetic at times and their understanding of sounds is limited to the basic ones we give to each letter.
Here in France, they are doing one term in the equivalent of Prep and Grade 1. They spoke French fairly fluently before coming, but had never tried to read or write it, yet in four weeks of a very rigorous phonics-based method (each night they have a particular sound to learn, and they learn all the different ways that sound can be "spelt" and then they rote learn a set of words with that sound and the various spellings), they are reading in French almost as well as in English.
Now of course, the acquisition of the key to literacy, that is obtaining an understanding of the concept of sound symbol correspondence, only needs to happen once. Once you've got it, you can transfer it to any other language you know the sounds of. But still, I can't help feeling that the methodical way in which the sounds of the French language are being approached, in my children's school, and in every other school across the country, sounds synchronised to the day as far a sI can tell, has something going for it. In any case, my kids are lapping it up...
At home in Australia they are in grade 3 (reading fairly fluently) and Grade 1 (getting the hang of it). In Australia, I feel they are managing fairly well with the acquisition of literacy, but their writing is all over the place, their spelling still quite phonetic at times and their understanding of sounds is limited to the basic ones we give to each letter.
Here in France, they are doing one term in the equivalent of Prep and Grade 1. They spoke French fairly fluently before coming, but had never tried to read or write it, yet in four weeks of a very rigorous phonics-based method (each night they have a particular sound to learn, and they learn all the different ways that sound can be "spelt" and then they rote learn a set of words with that sound and the various spellings), they are reading in French almost as well as in English.
Now of course, the acquisition of the key to literacy, that is obtaining an understanding of the concept of sound symbol correspondence, only needs to happen once. Once you've got it, you can transfer it to any other language you know the sounds of. But still, I can't help feeling that the methodical way in which the sounds of the French language are being approached, in my children's school, and in every other school across the country, sounds synchronised to the day as far a sI can tell, has something going for it. In any case, my kids are lapping it up...
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